11 Jun
2009
11 Jun
'09
10 a.m.
2009/6/11 Guy Sotomayor <ggs at shiresoft.com>:
In reality, AIX is the ultimate Unix clone since
it's one of the few
Unix-like OS' that is actually be branded as Unix(tm) by X/Open.
ISTR it uses a real licensed kernel, or at least, did Way Back When?.
?Linux is a
Unix-like OS and can't use the Unix(tm) because it can't pass the X/Open
conformance tests which is a requirement for being able to use the Unix
trademark.
That, AFAIK, is incorrect. It is not that it /can't/ pass the tests,
it's that nobody is willing to pay for it to be tested. It would cost
something ITRO US$30K or more to be tested. The likes of Red Hat or
Canonical/Ubuntu don't see the point; Novell until recently still had
a branded Unix product it was selling, and so wouldn't then and
probably can't afford to now; the Debian project can't afford the
money and probably doesn't care; and so on.
Those that can don't want to, those that might want to either can't
afford it or aren't interested for other reasons.
And Linux being what it is, if one distro was branded, it would not
apply to all the others anyway.
So it is not that Linux can't pass; it's that being a diffuse, public
project, it's not really eligible or suitable and there's no real
point.
The Linux X server has become the official, canonical one now,
inasmuch as X.org adopted the fork of XFree86 v4. I think that today
one could argue that inasmuch as there's one Unix which runs on almost
anything and is in widespread use, that is the default origin and
target of most Unix apps, it's Linux.
And for extra credit, what Unix(tm) is the highest
volume Unix?
Apple's Mac OS X, by a country mile. I believe its sales - many tens
of millions now, possibly even >100,000,000 - mean that it has outsold
*all* other forms of commercial Unix ever from all vendors *put
together*.
But the vast majority of Mac OS X installations are single-user
desktop or notebook machines. Its server penetration is tiny. Even so,
its sales are so large that it probably has more interactive *users*
than all the host-based Unices driving terminal sessions put together,
too.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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